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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

Japan: Son appeals rejection of retrial over 1949 deadly train derailment in Tokyo suburb

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The seven-car train plowing into Mitaka Station on July 15, 1949
TOKYO -- The son of a man who died in detention after he was handed the death penalty over the fatal derailment of an unmanned train in the Tokyo suburban city of Mitaka in 1949 filed an appeal with the Tokyo High Court over its rejection of a second request for a retrial of the case.

The appeal was filed on Aug. 5 by Kenichiro Takeuchi, 76, the eldest son of Keisuke Takeuchi, who was sentenced to hang on charges of overturning trains causing death. 

The sentence was finalized in 1955 and he died at a detention center aged 45.

The defense counsel for Keisuke has argued that the fundamental part of his testimonies changed significantly over time even though he had confessed to acting alone in the crime, and that his testimonies thus have less credibility.


In the upcoming appeal hearing, judges who belong to a separate department from one that rejected the retrial request on July 31 will decide whether to grant a retrial.

In the so-called Mitaka Incident, six people were killed when a runaway train derailed at Mitaka Station of the then Japanese National Railways (JNR) on the night of July 15, 1949, in the turbulent aftermath of the end of World War II.

RELATED | Japan: 70 years on, struggle for exoneration in Mitaka case continues

Keisuke died in 1967 while he was waiting for a retrial request he had filed in 1956 to be granted. 

His son Kenichiro filed the second retrial request in 2011.

Source: mainichi.jp, Staff, August 6, 2019


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Japan
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